jt_3d Reviews

A Yank in the R.A.F. (1941)

Missing the war stuff...

[4/10 · 28 July 2011]

Maybe this was a great flick. I didn't think so but I must have missed something because I didn't care about any of it. And yet others score it higher than my generous and benevolent 5/10. At first I cared; would Betty gain her senses and go with the suave Brit? Would she spy the other suave Brit who loved her from afar? No, she keeps running back to the jerk. And Power was a very annoying jerk. And it just keeps going on and on. Maybe I'm just jealous. I could never treat a woman like that and have her crawling back over and over....

...Anyway, this movie could have had the chaps doing anything and it wouldn't have mattered. It had nothing to do with the war. It was a love triangle flick, with not enough action to keep the men in the audience interested. The lead lads could have been trucking dynamite over the Rockie Mountains, building a skyscraper in NYC or bagging groceries at the local Piggly Wiggly. It wouldn't have mattered. It was about the love triangle and that just does nothing for me, especially in a 'war movie'. There wasn't even a cliché chance for one of the competitors to save the other one and get killed in the process. No, in the end they traipse off as a threesome. Nothing is resolved and the jerk is still hitting on every woman he sees, nobody wins. I find it annoying.

5/10 ...nope make that 4/10. What a waste of time.

The Big Lift (1950)

Worth a watch.

[7/10 · 26 June 2011]

I watched this one the first time and just forgot it. However I watched it again and saw that I completely missed how good it is. Not great but certainly worth watching.

It has a decent enough story line about a young air force sergeant falling for a local Berlin Fraulein, only to find out that she lied to him about her husband not being in the SS during the war and then she lied to him again to try to get him to marry her so she could get to the US and then divorce him and go to her real beloved, I assume the afore mention SS hubby, now living in Missouri, US. Maybe not pure evil but definitely self absorbed. Unfortunately she probably polished up her act and managed to keep the next poor schmo who came along and got what she wanted in the end. Anyway....

But the best parts to me was showing postwar Berlin, still chock full of rubble. Even Rhein-Main airfield when it was still dirt. Much improved by the time I went through there in the 70's. A nice documentation of Germany shortly after the war. And being made in 1950, this was what it must have looked like around town, during the airlift...except for in color. A nice glimpse of what postwar Berlin was like, complete with a trip through the Russian sector.

And speaking of Russians, who knew Russian spies could be as lovable as Herr Stieber? The GIs were as good as some Hollywood actors I could mention and they really fleshed out the movie. And a lesson: Revenge is not necessarily sweet, taught to a tough former POW.

All in all a decent enough movie. Worth watching.

Shooter (1988 TV Movie)

Great movie you will never see.

[8/10 · 22 October 2010]

Back in the day, when cable boxes had knobs on them that needed tweaked, there was a movie on that I wanted to watch. It was a Vietnam War movie called 'Shooter'. I never intended to keep it. I just wanted to watch it. So I popped in a tape and went to work. Unfortunately the cable box wasn't quite tuned in. Thus for 20 years, the only copy I've had of this very entertaining movie is a very grainy copy from NBC's Sunday Night at the Movies. At least the box's volume knob wasn't turned down too far.

Shooter is a made for TV movie about a news service combat photographer named Matt in Vietnam, attached, through the bond of war and friendship, to the guys in B Company.

Also in the bureau is a motley crew of other photographers. Stork, Matt's roommate, who is certain he's going to die. Rene, a Frenchman who is more warrior than correspondent. Klaus, who is using his job to pilfer ancient Vietnamese artifacts.

In addition there is the chief, Rizzo, providing a bit of comic relief. A hot Vietnamese woman, Lan, who speaks perfect English and went to school at Berkley but 'didn't need to go to school to learn to be a woman' (yummy) and the lovable but unappreciated film processor, Ngoc. Cat, the one woman photographer in the bureau, is really lost in the mix but looks very cute in field gear. And the lovely Helen Hunt as Tracey, one of Matt's old girl friends.

Also Garth Andrews, a reporter out to make a name for himself and his crew who want to kill him, not undeservedly.

Borrowing a page from Good Morning, Vietnam, there is also a lovable street urchin who is actually a VC.

A well thought out cast, some great acting and an interesting story of one man's quest to get an historical picture makes this movie pretty good entertainment. Well, the plot is kind of thin but it is a well written movie and worth watching, if you can ever find it. Actually you could say there are three plots. The Matt vs. girls dilemma plot. The Grunwald plot where Matt takes pictures and labels them for Grunwald and gives Grunwald's money to the local orphanage. And the borrowed bomber plot. At any rate, I'd love to see it on DVD but I doubt that will ever happen.

By the way, having old tapes around is like a time capsule to the past. This one is a reminder of a time when prime time network TV actually went 20 minutes before the first commercial. And there's a Dukakis/Bentsen commercial.

Also cars were really inexpensive back then. Ah, if only I had a time machine, I'd never leave the 80s.

Sorry for the length and sidetracks. I should never write a review while watching the movie.

Behind Enemy Lines (1997)

Vietnam still exists today.

[5/10 · 27 August 2010]

This is not a Vietnam War movie. It just happens to be placed there but in current time. A Vietnam where the soldiers owe their allegiance to their General, rather than to some state government. Hence, all these dudes getting mowed down for no apparent reason which could possibly benefit them in any way. And the lousy training of a private army accounts for their inability to hit anything they shoot at. Well, that and plot convenience.

At any rate, a Black Op goes wrong and one man is captured. When he is deemed to have no valuable knowledge, he is kept as bait for his buddy, who might. Surprise, surprise, he does show up, bearing some of his ex-Marine buddies and, well, the other guy's sister.

This flick reeks of made for TV. It has some good action and an interesting plot, some fair acting but in total it really just stinks.

5/10

The Adventures of Tartu (1943)

A pretty good WWII spy movie.

[7/10 · 20 July 2010]

The Adventures of Tartu aka Sabotage Agent is a cut above the mass produced war movies of the 40s. The acting is very good. The sets are fantastic. Special effects are very good. And the story is pretty good even if it is just one of many, many 'go behind enemy lines to destroy X' stories. The script is very well written.

Our story starts with Cpt. Stevenson being called to defuse a bomb in a hospital, which of course he succeeds in doing. Immediately after he is called to head off to Czechoslovakia on a secret mission because he grew up in Romania and speaks the language like a native, as well as speaking German. Soon enough he's off to try to contact the Czech underground, disguised as one Jan Tartu, a now deceased Romanian Iron Guard member. But before he can make contact his link to the underground is arrested and he has to try to make contact on his own.

Stevenson becomes a Nazi official and keeps trying to make contact with the underground so he can get help to complete his mission before the deadline. Which leads to my favorite scene of the movie. After a great performance in a pub, Tartu/Stevenson is captured by a group of men who have to find out who he is. It's a cool scene, well conceived though I was able to figure out what was going on before it was revealed so it may have went on a bit too long.

Naturally Stevenson is able to complete his mission and escape by way of a rather implausible shootout in which he never misses and the Nazis can't hit the floor with their hat. Nevetheless, this movie is somewhat better than the rest of the period, thanks mostly to Donat's somewhat comical portrayal of a Romanian Nazi puppet and his great acting. As well as the excellent sets and effects. I'd give it 8 stars but since this plot has been done oh so many times I only gave it 7/10.

And by the way, Tartu only says Heil Hitler 15 times, though it seems like more because nine of them are within one 10 minute section.

Threads (1984 TV Movie)

Do not watch this movie.

[8/10 · 29 June 2010]

I don't normally review movies that have this many reviews already but I feel it is my duty to warn my fellow nuclear missile fodder.

This has got to be the most depressing movie ever made. I kept The Day After around for a feel bad movie. But whereas The Day After makes you feel bad for a while, Threads makes you want to put a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. And that's exactly what I'll do if there is ever a nuclear war. Fortunately the chances of that happening are pretty slim these days, unlike when I was growing up. Duck and cover my eye. Stand and get obliterated. You don't want to see what's coming.

Threads will take away all hope of any meaningful existence after a nuclear exchange. The collapse of society, the lack of any of the services we now take for granted, the lack of fuel to run heavy equipment just to dig holes for the millions of bodies, no place to live, nothing to eat, the rats, the filth, the utter lack of concern for anybody but yourself. It's all realistically shown in Threads along with a graphic depiction of the incineration of the lucky ones during the attack. Threads does an excellent and realistic depiction of what life might be like after a nuclear war, from shortly before the war to decades after. And it's very grim. This is hardly news really. We all know a nuclear war will be very, very bad. It's just not something we want to think about. Threads shoves it down your throat with both hands.

I've seen this movie twice now and hope to never be foolish enough to watch it again, though I must say the second time didn't seem as bad. I prefer The Day After, not because it's softer and holds out more hope but because it has more of a buildup to the nuclear exchange and that's the part I find interesting. I can recommend The Day After for a one time viewing. I can not say the same about Threads. It will change your life and not in a good way. I do agree that all politicians should watch it though.

But for what they managed to show and the nasty realism I give it a 8/10.

Beach Red (1967)

Suffers from late 60s syndrome

[5/10 · 29 June 2010]

Beach Red could have been a great war movie. It has great scenery, good photography, a good story and a pretty good cast. A WWII US Marine movie with Rip Torn as a Gunny has to try very hard to not be good. But this movie went above and beyond in it's headlong rush towards mediocrity. Beach Red doesn't even get started before getting boring. Cornel Wilde, as Capt. MacDonald is just dull. His constant musing, in the form of out loud thoughts, gets more and more annoying as the movie goes on. Even more annoying is the constant whining by Patrick Wolfe (Pvt. Cliff). I guess the director (Cornel Wilde) really, really liked him because he gets more close ups than Mister Ed did in the TV show Mister Ed. And his attempts to show emotion through facial expressions gets pretty nauseating. Mister Ed was better at that and he was a horse. Mister Ed was a better actor too.

Overall this movie, along with Thin Red Line, suffers from what I refer to as a hippie influence. It has a campy feel to it. The overbearing music and constant flashbacks to family, women from the past and even a cockroach getting stepped on gets annoying after a while. The explosions are not very good and most of the guys that get killed fall over in cartoon fashion. The combat scenes are mediocre and fail to make you feel like you are there. Somehow a sniper manages to shoot two guys with one bullet. Not impossible but unlikely when he's above them, in a tree. At one point Pvt. Cliff is on a patrol and gets sergeant stripes halfway through. Later, on the same patrol, he doesn't have them anymore. Close ups of various bugs and flowers says hippie to me.

There are some good points. Burr DeBenning, as Egan, provides a bit of comedy and the less annoying flashbacks. Rip Torn is good as a tough as nails marine Gunnery Sergeant. Jaime Sánchez plays a marine who wants nothing more than to get out of the war alive and will take any opportunity to get out but still does his job. The guys playing the Japanese officers seem to be pretty good actors but the enlisted guys don't. They are mostly young so maybe they were just inexperienced. There's a pretty good attempt by the japs to pull a surprise attack which is the climax of the movie and at least brings some war to this war movie. The Japanese are portrayed as real soldiers too and have their own flashbacks. They speak Japanese but there's no subtitles. You can usually figure out what's being said though so it's not too important. As usual they get mowed down by the dozen but they really did in the war so it's a fair cop. If they ever tried the sneak attack plan as shown in Beach Red, I've never heard of it. But I thought it added some tension to this rather dull war movie.

In the end I toss it on the pile with a bunch of other mediocre war movies and give it 6/10. Worth a watch.

Crash Landing (2005)

Delightful mindless disaster romp...

[4/10 · 16 June 2010]

...and that's about it. From the rank insignia of the army guys which are turned sideways to the General chatting with an island in the south Pacific with a VHF walkie talkie from his living room, there's no way this movie is meant to be taken seriously. The farcical notion that one guy could own an entire airline and still be rich is pure LOL material. Curling irons which come with 20 foot power cords, airplane graphics right out of Flightsim 2k if not FS98, a 747 which can be landed on a soggy dirt runway, every dogface knowing how to land a 747 better than a real pilot, the idea that four guys could build 300 feet of runway in an hour, bulletproof galley carts and bulkheads and lav doors, there's no way you can take this movie seriously.

If you don't you might enjoy it. There's plenty of cute girls, guns, suspense and shootouts. And a boy meets girl, girl hates his guts but comes to get the hots for him subplot.

With lines like 'How many bullets do you have? Six. But there's five of them! It never hurts to bring a spare.' and morbide but funny exchanges between a coroner and a cop, you have to know this is not meant to be quality entertainment.

This is just some mindless way to kill some time, meant for a younger audience i.e. my kids, not me. Still I enjoyed it, just not enough to give it too much of a score and I don't think it was meant to be rated very high.

P.S. A slip is where you cross control the ailerons and rudder to lose altitude quickly. Crabbing is what you do to correct in a crosswind. Just a tip in case you are ever stationed on a south Pacific island, building a runway in a hurricane and need to tell a pilot how to land a 747 full of spoiled, rich hotties.

I bestow 4/10

No Highway in the Sky (1951)

Engaging up to a point...

[7/10 · 15 June 2010]

Jimmy Stewart shows his immense talent playing an unappreciated genius and he does it very well. His acting is top rate in this role. It is a very good story...right up until the end.

I've watched this flick three times over the years and every time I do the end really, really bugs me. It's like they ran out of money and just decided to close it down. When you watch it you're engaged and you're waiting for the next event and then it slams the door in your face.

Mr. Honey gets vindicated but there's no satisfaction. And the whole math is exact and cannot lie is annoying and unrealistic. 'The figures cannot lie but they seem wrong - *CRASH* Oh, here's the reason why our numbers were off. THE END' is a bit ridiculous. Our genius engineer failed to take any varibles into account. Only Jimmy's character makes me not hate engineers for an hour and a half.

Be that as it may, this is a very engaging movie about an airliner that Mr. Honey is convinced is going to crash and he tries to get them grounded. Don't ask why the aircraft manufacturer has a guy who doesn't do anything but sit around trying to figure out how to break their new plane when their own engineers, and presumably he is one, have certified it as safe.

At any rate I have to hand out a 7/10. The movie is very good until the last eight minutes or so.

Iron Angel (1964)

War film meets soft porn.

[5/10 · 8 June 2010]

In a similar vein as Beach Red, there are flashbacks to time spent partying with women, a not unrealistic activity for the troops to be engaged in. But it doesn't make for a good war movie. Beach Red is somewhat better and it has Rip Torn. There is a much too long flashback scene of a stripper which is quite disturbing. The director's wife/girlfriend maybe. Why those scenes were in there is anybody's guess. One showed that Reb liked his parties and that might explain why he got busted down to a private but that's the closest the flashbacks come to adding to the story.

This movie is about a patrol behind enemy lines, looking to knock out an enemy mortar which is cutting a supply road. The story is pretty good, the action is fair, the combat stuff is not so great. I guess none of them ever heard the term 'flank'. It does the job though. There's some humor but nothing you can't live without. Overall the whole movie is quite tepid. It is a rare movie about the Korean War but it's no Pork Chop Hill or Men in War. Well, maybe they aren't that rare. I have seven or so Korean War movies.

Anyway, worth a watch. 5/10

Battle of Blood Island (1960)

Not the ending I would have used.

[4/10 · 6 June 2010]

Poor combat scenes, a platoon of guys attacking an entire island, defended by less than 20 guys, in rubber boats (the attacking guys, not the defending guys). Actually they apparently only had one rubber boat. You never see two at the same time but at least they saved like ten bucks. At first the Japs are behind rocks, then after the battle we find that it was actually an open beach. Americans shot down while running back and forth in front of Japanese, like ducks in a shooting gallery. One survivor was supposed to have caught a mortar frag in the back but there wasn't a single explosion. Some of the Japs have M-1s (incorrect) some have bolt action rifles (correct). Some have bolt action rifles that fire multiple times without being cycled (incorrect).

But enough about the first two minutes of this movie. The movie itself was actually not too bad as a tale of survival. Follow the antics of the two survivors of a failed attack on a small Pacific island as they try to survive on a slightly enemy held island. They have to off the occasional Jap but it's mostly about rounding up something to eat and keeping the whiny guy quiet. Soon enough our intrepid heroes decide the island is too crowded and want to create some Lebensraum by doing unto the enemy before the enemy can do unto them, with a bunch of grenades. Alas, before any excitement can break out or anything can explode the Japanese guys kill themselves.

Now there's even less excitement left in this movie and we settle into a dull grind of listening to the whiny guy say "Moe" over and over and trying to figure out what's in that delicious soup Moe makes.

Now as soon as I saw a goat had mysteriously appeared on the island I had the ending written and there was going be one explosion in this movie, even if it was stock footage. But no, they went with the least interesting ending they could have used. Oh well.

4/10

Hitler's S.S.: Portrait in Evil (1985 TV Movie)

The story of how Nazism came to power.

[7/10 · 4 June 2010]

Hitler's SS attempts to show what life was like in Germany in the 30's and during the war, shown through the lives of one family. Two older brothers are just choosing their paths when the Nazi party starts to take hold. One brother, Karl, joins up right away and finds himself in the SA. He also doesn't like what he finds in the SA. The older one, Helmut, has no intention of following the crowd but ends up a favored officer in the SS, convinced that he can change things from the inside.

This movie shows the progression of Germany turning into a Nazi state by 'snapshots' of each year, from 1931 to 1945. In 1931 the brown shirts just hang out in bars and push people around. They're simply thugs. The Nazi party loses the election and almost everybody is happy about it. Then they win and elections are suspended making the Nazis the official state party forever. Now the Nazis have a firm grip and use force to hold onto power. Speak out against Hitler and Nazism and you are branded a traitor and you disappear to Dachau.

Then they orchestrate an incident to use as an excuse to invade Poland and it's war. And Helmut finds that he can't change anything while he is drawn further and further into the party and it's atrocities. Karl on the other hand ends up out of favor when the SA is disbanded but still ends up an officer on the eastern front. He is definitely not part of the madness and still does not like what he sees done by the Nazis. He resists being consumed by Nazism. Even little brother Hans, who is born in 1931, ends up being consumed and used up by the Nazi state.

The whole story is covered in this underrated movie. Not to be missed by any WWII movie buff, though there isn't really much combat.

7/10

The Battle of El Alamein (1969)

Better than most Italian WWII flicks.

[6/10 · 31 May 2010]

The Battle for El Alamein is a cut above the other Italian WWII movies I've seen. It does have it's flaws though. Poor editing - as our heroic Italian warriors are being overrun by the Brits, everyone is getting ready to die. One guy tenderly caresses a photo of his son and laments that his son will never get to see his father. BOOM BOOM BOOM of explosions and cut to Montgomery casually leaning on on an armored personnel carrier. Only to come back later and find out that they weren't wiped out. What Happened?! There are other annoying cuts but that was the worst.

The APCs are indeed M113s but the British did have something called the universal carrier which looks like an open top, cut down version of a 113. I'm willing to give that a pass.

At one point we are in the British camp and they have real Sherman tanks, long barreled ones but they are Shermans. The Germans have M48s, I think they are. Both sides are painted tan. But in the final battle we have a line of M48s lined up on the ridge. It wasn't until the Italians said they were being attacked that I realized these were supposed to be British tanks. Most confusing.

At any rate, this movie is a cut above the usual Italian war movie and is good enough for a watch. It's something different in that the roles are reversed and the Italians are the heroes and good soldiers and the allies are the faceless mob getting mowed down by the ton. Not that that is a good thing but it's a change of pace.

Zero Hour! (1957)

What has been seen cannot be unseen...

[5/10 · 24 May 2010]

...so it's impossible to forget Airplane! and watch Zero Hour!. Nevertheless, the lampooning that Zero Hour! received at the hands of Airplane! is not undeserved. Zero Hour! starts with some very bad flying sequences, supposed to be Dana Andrews', aka Stryker's, last war experience. But it really sets the tone for the whole movie - that it's not going to be very good. The director must have decided that it wasn't that important since it's just the lead in for the film but you never get a second chance to make a first impression, as they say. In this case the first impression is about right.

Zero Hour! involves a former RCAF pilot from WWII who has been afraid to accept responsibility since his last big decision as a leader in the war resulted in a mistake that cost the lives of six of his men. Since then Stryker's life has been a string of jobs and a wife who, after 10 years of sharing his misery without really understanding it, has had enough and is about to leave him. That's about the first five minutes. It's downhill from here.

Stryker rushes to get on the flight with his wife and kid. Of course something goes wrong and deadly fishes cause the flight crew to pass out and it's up to Stryker to save the day...and his marriage.

Anyway, my main beef with this movie is the over acting. Every line is charged with emotion. When the wife comes into the cockpit and sees her hubby in the pilot's seat she says 'Ted, what are you doing? You can't fly the plane!' Duh, if you look around the pilots are missing. Maybe you should just get over your bitterness, dear. Dana gives a good reply though, faithfully recreated in Airplane!. For some reason the Strykers both have to be reminded that their son's life hangs in the balance. Oh and all the others in the back might like to go on living too. I guess they don't matter. Just save Joey. He's kind of annoying but okay, whatever.

Anyway, there's several parts that are ridiculous. The bitter exchanges between Treleaven and Stryker. The hyper-efficient...airport manager, I guess he is. Treleaven out dancing while he's wearing his pilot's uniform. At least Airplane! had the sense to have Kramer at home where he'd just put on his uniform out of habit. And they weren't even trying.

Jamming on the brakes when you have a lot of runway left to roll-out, the random slamming forward and left of the control column for no reason (also faithfully recreated in Airplane!), yanking the goofy looking 'emergency brake' knob so hard he almost pulled the whole panel loose, the ridiculously huge cockpit, the jumping instrument needles, even when the real pilots are flying, the over emotional delivery of almost every line - it's all just a bit too goofy for me.

There's a reason why practically nobody's seen this movie since 1957 and a reason why Airplane! slammed it mercilessly. It deserves the obscurity it gets and is deserves the beating Airplane! gives it IMO. Like it or not Zero Hour! and Airplane! are inextricably linked. Watching Zero Hour! followed by Airplane! is such a hilarious experience, it's impossible to take Zero Hour! seriously.

5/10 and I think I'm being generous.

Then There Were Three (1961)

Pretty good mystery.

[6/10 · 17 May 2010]

A war time whodunit. Germans want to kill off a partisan prisoner who is about to be released by the Americans after they take the town he's being held in. Naturally the Germans concoct a complicated plan to get one of their guys, dressed as a GI, into the town where he's supposed to knock off the partisan once he's released from prison. Of course the Americans announce when that will be, though I can't imagine why. I'd think they'd just turn him lose but oh well.

This one had me guessing right up until the end, though it was due partly a couple of cheap tricks used to point the finger at the wrong guy. I confess to not guessing who was the spy before it was revealed. That makes it a good whodunit in my book.

As a war movie, it was not very good. The combat scenes were weak. There wasn't much excitement or grit at all. But it wasn't really a war movie. It was a mystery and in that respect I thought it was pretty good. And they didn't tell you who the bad guy was right at the start like so many so-called mystery movies do these days. I found it pretty entertaining.

6/10 I guess there weren't really any spoilers in this review.

Casablanca Express (1989)

Good story.

[6/10 · 11 January 2010]

The plot itself is pretty solid. The Nazis want to kidnap Churchill. Allied intelligence would rather that not happen. Actually filmed at least partly in Morocco, with a fairly decent cast, I find Casablanca Express good enough to have watched three times so far. It's got enough action to be interesting and is fairly believable. Though the Nazi leader's remarkable skill with a pistol got to be a bit much. Francesco Quinn and Jason Connery did a good job playing intelligence operatives, as did easy on the eyes Jinny Steffan. Glen Ford and Donald Pleasence have bit parts with Pleasence's sole purpose apparently being to give permission for Cooper to kill Churchill if he's in danger of being captured. Such an order would have to come from the British. I could see no other reason for him being in this movie based on what he adds to the story. Glen Ford's role is a bit bigger.

Good action with a dash of intrigue and espionage makes it easier to ignore glaring errors like the helmet liners instead of steel pots and plot convenience stunts which wipe out all the soldiers trying to take back control of the train. Worth a watch. 6/10

Partizanska eskadrila (1979)

Not awful

[5/10 · 27 October 2009]

Okay, I guess it's not realistic. Being unfamiliar with the history of the Partisan Air Force, I can't say. But it is a pretty good story and hearkens back to the beginning of aerial bombing; simply tossing bombs out the side of a biplane. It's interesting watching the unit grow from a couple of biplanes to a real air force by stealing planes from the enemy and being on the run from the same enemy. So as a flying war story, it's pretty good. But the 102 minute version is indeed poorly hacked up and since that's the one I saw, that's the one I have to vote on.

Very clichéd. Boy meets girl but he is too busy running the outfit to give her the time of day, until it's too late, and then only to fly back over the base after the climatic final mission and call her name on the radio and then disappear mysteriously ala the ending of Fighter Squadron I believe it was, where the hero spirals down into the clouds, leaving their fates unknown. Other boy meets other girl, boy becomes hero and wins girl, girl becomes dead. The only thing missing was him becoming enraged and destroying the enemy single handed. As mentioned, the partisans are dubbed in English but the Germans speak German without subtitles making those scenes pretty pointless unless you happen to speak German. Even then I think they could have been cut in favor of fleshing out the partisan parts. But I guess they were trying to set up the final battle between two opponents who had been playing cat and mouse throughout the movie. It doesn't really work, especially when you can't understand what the cat is saying.

Other than that, it's a fairly decent war story which suffers from poor editing and poor model effects, though they do know how to blow stuff up.

P.S. As a note to whomever is in charge of stuff like this: The US version is named The Battle of the Eagles. Yet Eagle (Adler) is what the German pilots called themselves in this movie. Sort of confusing, don't you think? Rather than naming it after the bad guys, maybe it should have been named something like, oh say Partisan Squadron. duh. 5/10 from me.

Corregidor (1943)

This is not the WWII movie you are looking for.

[2/10 · 5 October 2009]

Pants, baggy, sweaty pants. Not even good for the WWII 'pump up the home front so they buy bonds' circuit. It seems like a combination of two scripts, neither of them very good. Is it a love story? Maybe for the first few minutes. Is it a war movie? Sort of, in that there are guys getting shot in a cartoon fashion. This movie doesn't seem to know what it wants to do.

An attempt is made to show the fall of Corregidor but somebody wanted to add an element of a love triangle. It didn't work then and it didn't work for Pearl Harbor. At least Pearl took a lot of time to try to make both sides work. Corregidor didn't even bother to make one side work. I cared more about Hey Dutch and Pinky than I cared about any of the three main characters.

Add in really lousy stock footage of various US planes being passed off as Japanese planes and this thing screams mass production. It also whispers silent movie, like the one part where the Doc goes in to do some surgery and there's no more gloves. It's all pantomimed, like a silent. Except this is 1943! If this had been made in the 30s I could forgive a lot of the flaws but this pig was made well into the 40s and there's just no excuse other than being a cheap knock off. Frankly I find it insulting to the men and women of Corregidor. It should have a real remake except most everybody that was there is probably dead by now so all you'd get is more Hollyworld hogwash.

2/10

The Last Sentinel (2007)

Support Your Local Drone Police.

[6/10 · 2 October 2009]

While I appreciate those who have decided how I should vote this movie, I prefer to set my own score.

I guess I'm the only one who didn't watch this because of Katee Sackoff. I didn't know she was in it until she showed up. Who doesn't like to watch human killing drones getting mowed down by the dozen? Too much action in an action movie? Pah! Give me tons of robot slaughter and explosions.

I would have liked to see more of Bokeem Woodbine's Anchilles. He had style. Katee 'The Girl' Sackoff was good too. Keith David's voice of the gun and mad Colonel Norton added a lot to this movie. Don Wilson, alas, was the weakest link. Norton and Anchilles were EEs too but they showed some personality. Not so with Tallis. I guess you could say that being the last of the best put him in a bad mood. I attribute it to bad acting or not acting really. No matter, he takes out drones and I like that.

This is a low budget movie and it shows. It's so low budget the director blew up one of his own cars in it. (The BMW that the resistance van crashes into.) It's mostly about blowing away drones because the storyline is simple. Drones take over the planet. Last hero has to take it back by destroying the drone control room. Easy. Should take about 10 minutes so drone slaughter has to take up the rest of the time. They could have used some of the time for back story, like how the drones took over, but they didn't. The brief snippets of drone propaganda don't tell you enough. I assume drones were invented to augment the police and were gradually given more and more responsibility until they replaced human police all together. Then, after it's too late, the humans change their mind and try to get rid of the drones. But the drones like being in charge and fight back. I don't know, it's not explained.

But I like it well enough. 6/10

Easy Virtue (1927)

Dull, just dull.

[2/10 · 7 September 2009]

I dosed off. There wasn't really anything in the first hour. You can skip to the last 30 minutes and get all this movie has to offer. Even then, there's not much there. Good dialog may have made something out of this mess but there wasn't any, being a silent film. I found myself sitting there wondering what was being said but there weren't any cards to tell me. I guess I was supposed to get something out of the expressions but I couldn't. Most of the cards were at the end and by then I didn't care what was being said.

Apparently some woman got divorced because she got her portrait painted by some artist who disappeared after shooting her husband....or something. She's miserable with her new husband, on her new estate because the mother-in-law doesn't like her or something. Does her new hubby like her or not? Don't ask me. He doesn't seem to care either way. And neither do I.

A big fat who cares to this one. 2 stars because I know there's something worse out there.

Blackmail (1929)

Talkies will never catch on.

[3/10 · 7 September 2009]

No need to dwell on the story. It's already been covered.

So I plug in the second disc of my Alfred Hitchcock set. The next movie is Blackmail. Pop over to IMDb.

Girl offs rapist. Boyfriend cop covers it up. Language: English. Good, I'm not a big fan of silent movies. I've seen enough of them already. Start movie, no sound, watch more. It certainly looks like a silent movie. Now they are talking but there's still no sound, check volume, it's up. Stop movie, look at menu. Yes, the last one on the disc is Blackmail (1928). Back to IMDb: Yes, language: English. Well something's wrong. Start movie over. Still no sound. Flying Squad Van(tm) cops make a pinch, very quietly. Maybe this is the rapist. Isn't he supposed to be dead? Girl ID's the perp and off to the pokey with him, still not dead. Pair of flatfoots saunter off and I hear whispers. Turn up volume and it's chitchat, still not understandable but doesn't sound important. I hope the whole thing isn't going to be like this. On to a rather disturbing scene in the overcrowded men's room with a bunch of half naked cops and one guy playing with a pair of handcuffs. Oh my. Once we flee from that scene we end up with the dynamic duo entering a room with our starlet in it and BLAMMO, voice!

Welcome to the talkies. History in the making...well 80 years ago. I wonder what it would have been like back in the day to actually be there when talkies made it to the theaters. I can imagine applause or at least excited whispering. I don't think the movie would have really needed to be very good. And it just so happens that this one isn't. Oh it's not terrible but it's pretty rough. Way too much time spent learning how to judge a good cigar. I'll keep the lesson in mind if I ever start smoking cigars and can afford really good ones. Maybe it was supposed to show that this guy had once been well off but has fallen on hard times. I don't know. A nice chase through the Museum. In fact it's the highlight of the movie. The rest is pretty much just padding. How can we justify chasing someone through the museum? Oh, we'll have the cops chasing a murderer. No, the murderer is a hottie and the star of the film. Okay, just some down on his luck guy off the street then. Splendid!

I would have at least liked for the guy to try to blackmail Alice and Frank for more than just a fine cigar and a meal. Hardly worthy of the death penalty. How about asking for, oh, I don't know, money maybe? In my opinion a forgettable film except for it's historical value.

3/10 to leave plenty of room for Hitchcock's and others' much better works.

Submarine Base (1943)

Unbelievable...and not in a good way.

[5/10 · 5 September 2009]

I agree, Alan Baxter was kind of dull in this. But my main beef with this movie is it's simply too hard to believe that this guy can cause six UBoots to sink and the Germans don't figure out to stop sending boats there for resupply.

Our hero, a character with a questionable history, has set up his own little anti-submarine corps. Supplying torpedoes to the Kreigsmarine. However he rigs one to explode on it's own and tells the captain to go out and sit on the bottom for four hours, supposedly because of the tide. Of course it's really so...well you get the idea. He then pays for a party so there's too much noise to hear the submarine blow up...and never any wreckage I suppose. Why not just let the thing sail out and blow up at some random time? So six boats go missing right after making contact with this guy and yet the Nazis don't suspect a thing. Oh well, there was a war on and they needed to keep the morale up so they made movies like this.

Normally I can suspend disbelief but this one is just too far-fetched. Even though I do like this movie, 5/10

The Pilot (1980)

I want my DVD

[8/10 · 26 August 2009]

Why, oh why hasn't this great flick made it to DVD yet? It's great and yet totally ignored. Granted I showed it to a couple of co-workers who had never seen it and they thought it was boring but still.

Mike Hagan is an ace pilot who can move the heavy metal better than anyone. But he drinks...on the job. He knows he has a problem and tries to deal with it before it gets out of hand. It's never that simple though and he gets caught.

One great part is the jet upset scene. It is so convincing that you feel like you are in the plane with them as they plummet out of the sky. Meanwhile our hero is giving his passengers a lovely tour of the Grand Canyon area, maybe even with a snoot full. But he's not falling out of the sky like his sober counterpart, no sir.

All the flying stuff is well done, using real planes flying over the Grand Canyon, falling out of the sky, flying through the mountains... after falling out of the sky, taking off, landing. The cockpit shots are also well done, even showing somebody who looks like the actors from the outside while the plane appears convincingly to be in the air.

There is one part that bugs me. Towards the end, before the supposed engine explosion, you see the pilot push up the throttles but immediately pull the fuel shut off for number 4, before it is even supposed to have blown up, before it could even spool up for that matter. I can't even think of a scenario that would call for that to be shot. You push up all four and one blows you pull them all back, since you're not even moving yet, not just shut down the one and keep going. It makes no sense. I would cut that part off if it was me.

Great movie, in need of a DVD release. I hope they put one out before I wear out my VHS copy.

Carter's Army (1970 TV Movie)

Not bad

[6/10 · 26 August 2009]

I consider anything other than a rough plot outline a spoiler so... ***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS***

I liked this movie. I watched it twice, just to make sure. I'd never heard of it before acquiring it with a lot of WWII films in a 20 pack. Again, the theme of a white 'cracker' being put in charge of a group of soldiers he considers inferior, similar to Go for Broke but more outright racism. Said cracker grows to respect his men, only for this one he only takes seven men instead of the whole company. An odd choice, most likely made by the director, to either focus more on the 'talent', Grier, Williams and Pryor. Or just so he wouldn't have to pay a bunch more actors to be cannon fodder. Whatever the reason, trying to take and hold a dam with seven guys is stupid. As is the lieutenant allowing a deaf guy to go with. I can understand a deaf guy wanting to serve and somehow finding a way to sneak into the army, especially into a so-called service unit. But for the C.O., either one, to allow him on a real combat mission is again, stupid.

Anyway, the unit is a mess. This is directly the fault of the commander, a black lieutenant. He's the one who let the men turn into a band of hobos. Lousy assignments or not, these men were supposed to be soldiers. Thus it makes the cracker captain's job that much harder. Still you can see him start to at least consider that he might be wrong as soon as he finds out that the second man he encounters (the first is a rather shiftless Richard Pryor) and threatens for not saluting, is actually an officer and the unit commander. Of course, the lieutenant is still out ranked and should have maybe saluted but since the captain was such a jerk, he didn't really deserve one.

But I digress, this is a war movie and war movies should have action. This one does and it's pretty well done. But there's the getting to the mission part, where we encounter a German Frau who is a contact of sorts. She is also the girl from the Star Trek pilot, Vena. Still looking nice. She is wise about war and says stuff that makes the black lieutenant want to give her a peck on the cheek. Naturally cracker captain catches him and scolds him about touching white women. Said white woman proceeds to smack him in the mouth for acting like the racist Nazis she is opposed to. This is really the start of cracker boy's turn around. He apologizes to the black lieutenant and says 'I didn't ask (for this mission) but I expected soldiers'. And as well he should have.

Why they assigned this mission to a service unit, who knows. Maybe they were the only unit close enough, maybe they were just expendable. It's never explained. At any rate, they did the job. They took it to the enemy and won the day. Most were lost. Being famous didn't save you in this movie, just like some of the biggies. All in all a solid war film.

There is one LOL moment at the end, when Pryor is being helped to the medic jeep. Watch his right hand.

Pacific Inferno (1979)

Typical 70s

[3/10 · 23 August 2009]

The best thing about this flick is that it seems like they used a lot of stuff left over from the Pearl Harbor attack in Tora Tora Tora. My favorite was the shot of the P-40 crashing into the row of parked P-40s but filmed from the top of a hangar or crane. Unfortunately it just gets worse from there.

There's two black guys and two white guys as American POWs, as well as some Filipinos POWs and Japanese guards. The ranking POW of the Americans is a white naval Lieutenant, which is of course an O-3 in the navy. At any rate, he's in need of a haircut, badly, distractingly badly. Hockey hair does not belong in a WWII movie. Oh, and he's a racist. He doesn't want to share quarters with the 'negros'. Of course in real life, he wouldn't want to share quarters with the white enlisted guy either. I think the Geneva Convention has a clause about officers quarters and enlisted but that wasn't the point here. Oh well, I think plot is secondary to other issues in this flick. He gets put in his place and pretty much spends the rest of the movie as a look out and running the air pump for the divers.

But once you get going, it's not a bad story line. The japs want the divers to raise the silver thrown out by the Americans before Corrigador fell. The Filipino resistance wants them to take their time. And the POWs do their best to help. A potentially good story and not that badly done I guess. A bit unbelievable when the POWs use camp made re-breathers to swim between the POW camp and the Filipino village, every night. Maybe I'm not that picky when I know going in that this is not a blockbuster film. I guess that's why it comes on a 20-pack DVD war movie collection for five bucks.

The 70s music did not belong in this movie or any WWII movie. It's quite distracting to say the least. The acting was not that bad. Probably better than I could do.

Not being a fan of football, at least I found out that Jim Brown is a real person and not somebody Richard Pryor made up. That in itself was worth the 25¢ I paid for this movie.

Worth watching on TCM or paying a quarter for.

One star for being a war movie, another for being WWII and one more because I'm feeling generous.